We were about to take off yesterday for dinner when I checked my e-mail one last time. The headline from an article forwarded from Monday’s Washington Post caught my eye: “Social Networks' Sway May Be Underestimated.” Dinner would have to wait.

Rob Stein begins with, “Facebook, MySpace and other Web sites have unleashed a potent new phenomenon of social networking in cyberspace. But at the same time, a growing body of evidence is suggesting that traditional social networks play a surprisingly powerful and under-recognized role in influencing how people behave.”

At the same time I’m using this space to highlight several points of particular relevance to us, I would encourage you to read the article in its entirety. [www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/25/AR2008052501779.htm]

Stein provides examples of what might be called ”degrees of separation” influence. A series of studies “are fueling a growing recognition that many behaviors are swayed by social networks in ways that have not been fully understood.” Stein writes. Researchers are considering the possibility that these networks can be “harnessed” for socially desirable results, everything from exercising to fighting crime.

Stein offers this insight from Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist. "Public policy in general treats people as if they are sort of atomized individuals,” she says. “What we see in this research is that we are missing a lot of what is happening if we think only that way."

The particular example Stein uses to illustrate the larger point is attempts to stop smoking. Using a landmark heart study out of Framingham, Massachusetts, researchers found that over a 32-year period the decision to quit “appeared to be highly influenced by whether someone close to them stopped. A person whose spouse quit was 67 percent more likely to kick the habit. If a friend gave it up, a person was 36 percent more likely to do so. If a sibling quit, the chances increased by 25 percent.”

Co-workers had a similar size impact if the smoker worked in a small firm, Stein reports, and while neighbors did not appear to affect one another, “friends did even if they lived far away.”

While the study did not examine why this occurred, Nicholas A. Christakis, a medical sociologist at the Harvard Medical School, speculated that "Something changes in the zeitgeist”—something that made behavior “unacceptable”--“and all these people move together in lockstep."

We talked a lot the last couple of weeks about how hard it is to move legislators (Members of Parliament) in Great Britain in a life-affirming direction. There are not a lot of pro-life MPs which is a major reason why additional ghastly anti-life legislation appears about to be enacted and why so many MPs find it offensive—almost a breach of etiquette--even to give the pro-life perspective an airing.

Here at home you have kept the abortion alive and in the forefront of the public policy debate. There are many reasons (see Part Two) that abortions continue to come down in Michigan and across the country. However near the very top is how you have helped change the “zeitgeist”—the prevailing intellectual and cultural climate—in a serious way.

Obviously, people are not yet moving in “lockstep.” But it is equally true that 35 years after Roe v. Wade, there is majority support for only a tiny percentage of the abortions are performed—primarily in instances of rape, incest, or where the life of mother is at risk.

Moreover, showing how deeply ambivalent people are, when asked whether they consider abortion to be murder, customarily more than 50% agree it is!

For us the most important point of the Stein article is what might be called the “ripple” effect. “[T]he influence of a single person quitting nevertheless appeared to cascade through three degrees of separation,” he writes, “boosting the chance of quitting by nearly a third for people two degrees removed from one another.”

“It could be your co-worker's spouse's friend or your brother's spouse's co-worker or a friend of a friend of a friend,” Christakis told Stein. ”The point is, your behavior depends on people you don't even know.”

Your behavior, for example, standing up for the unborn or having a child in difficult circumstances, can have a dramatic impact not just on those closest to you but, by extension, on people you’ll probably never know—on people “who are beyond your social horizon.”

Knowing this—and sharing this—will boost your spirits this first day after Memorial Day. Talk to you tomorrow.

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Part One: "Obama's Abortion Vulnerability" & Pro-Aborts "Unmask McCain"
Part Two: Number of Abortions in Michigan Goes Down